memes

... Do you not understand the context that arose to the comment I made?

Person 1: Its dumb that you need a parking pass, for a car, to use isolated national parks in WA, most of which are very far away from civilization.

Person 2: Just bicycle to national parks.

Me: Disabled people cannot bicycle tens or hundreds of miles to a national park, nor is that really reasonable for non disabled people generally, that is a ludicrous suggestion.

You: sp3ctr4l is obviously using disingenuous anti bkcycling, pro car strawmen arguments.

... Please learn to read before you wildly throw out nonsensical accusations.

The entire discussion here ... it inherits the details and context of its parent comments.

The discussion is particular to a specific set of circumstances in Washington state, USA.

Proposing bicycling as a universal transit solution, or long distance solution, or a solution to get to remote areas, in a highly mountainous region... is wildly impractical.

I don't know for 100% certain, but you have a .nl user account, which to me implies a decent chance you live in the Netherlands.

... A place that is about 1/4 the size of WA, and is extremely flat.

This would be like proposing bicycling as a reasonable long distance travel solution for... basically the southern half of Norway if you bisected its area at the appropriate latitude line.

That is about the same size and has comparable elevation extremes, although the climate varies much more in WA, from temperate, to temperate rainforest, to a literal desert on the east side of the Cascades.

(Indeed, this is why WA has a very sizeable population of Norweigian ancenstry, because much of the state reminded them of much of Norway.)

... Finally: Many, many people who live in WA fairly regularly do indeed go on 3hr trips to visit a distant national park for either one day, or a weekend. Mt St Helens, the Hoh Rainforest, vist the Grand Coulee Dam, etc.

I have actually known a decent number of people in my life, living in WA, who have a, 2+ hour daily commute to work, 2+ hr commute back, either by car, or involving a ferry ride, or via public transit.

I myself had such a commute via bus routes at one point.

I agree with you that truly set aside for civilization, natural parks... should indeed be difficult and remote and hard to access.

... Which is why I mocked the idea of bicycling being proposed specifically as a way to get to them.

Yes! Of course!

In my ideal world, there would be general, semi-individualized, semi on demand, or at least 'request a ride in advance', electric or hydrogen or hybrid (or perhaps even locally sourced bio diesel powered, if electric or hydrogen is too cost prohibitive) mini busses or vans that would help people with mobility difficulties get to and from daily tasks within a city or multi city region.

This would be like ambulances, like fire trucks, like ... other busses.

Some important services just cannot be practically un-car-ified, and still function at all effectively.

This is why most busses in Seattle, and much of the US broadly, have deployable disability ramps and internal wheelchair attachment point zones, so that wheelchair bound folks can get around.

It would probably be more generally time effiecient to have just a seperate fleet dedicated to them/us in particular, given that a single wheel chair pickup/deboard for a city bus can throw off its entire planned timetable by a good amount, in high density, high traffic, peak ridership hours.

... but thats getting a bit into the precise technicalities.

...

For long distance disabled travel? Yeah, this is a legitimately more difficult logistics problem to solve in a general way that isn't wildly costly to either the rider, or the ride provider... but bicycles are probably the least sensible solution to this problem I've ever heard.